One of the things Claud had remembered the most when he was perusing the library was how their status had changed. Now that he was here to visit this place, checking out one of the most fundamental things of life was a no-brainer.

Rubbing his hands, Claud called out his status, and a screen appeared in his eyes.

[Name: Claud Primus (NPC)

Class: Omen (Tier-9, Innate),

Class Mastery: 23%

Energy Rank: D-

EXP to next rank:

EXP stored:

Physical modifier: 300000 ( * )

Energy modifier: 300000 ( *)

HP: ?/? (??? * * )

Energy: ?/? (??? * * )

Active Skills: Presence Nullification, Flight, Binding Order, Cleanse, FiBoD;A??? , FiBoD;A???

Passive Skills: DiL???C, Mana Hub, Understanding

Tat????: ???

Comments: ]

“Ooh.” Claud looked at his status and made a few noises. “It really changed! Let’s compare our statuses! Did you bring the book along?”

“Sure did,” Lily replied. “Let me pull it out.”

She took a while to pull it out, since her bag was also full of really useful items. Like Claud’s own backpack, she carried a full suite of every possible countermeasure to any given situation recorded so far, just in case the two of them got separated.

“Let’s see,” said Lily. “Found it. Lucien Lostfon’s status here…”

Claud craned his neck and took a long look. “That’s odd. His class has “translation failure”, right?”

“The same goes for me,” Lily replied. “Wait, do you have your own class?”

“Yeah.” Claud took a glance at the relevant tabs. “It’s called ‘Omen’, and there are brackets that read ‘Tier-9, Innate’. On the next line, there’s something called Class Mastery, and it’s at twenty-three percent. Also, my physical modifier here, unlike the question marks, is actually three hundred thousand, the same as my energy modifier.”

“Eh?” Lily examined her status. “So, the class has something to do with the part that’s called class mod…seems to be that way, right? What’s your class mod?”

“It’s…yeah. It’s one thousand for me, but there’s no numerical representation on Lucien Lostfon’s status.” Claud frowned. “Nice to know, but what does this number represent?”

Lily looked around the resting area for Celestia’s people, the ISV Carpark 1A, and then smiled helplessly. “I don’t think testing that out in a graveyard seems to be a good idea, even if it’s already ruined.”

“Yeah, true.” Claud raised his hand and examined it. He had a feeling that he just needed to exert energy to find out, but the number scared him. “I’ll feel bad if I destroy these things by accident. Still, I can roughly guess. I mean, this new status must have a standard force for an attack, right? If we take the standard mana circuit as one, then my attacks will have three hundred thousand times the strength of that.”

“…That’s horribly scary if true.” Lily cupped her chin. “But if that’s the case, maybe that explains the tremendous power behind your single-shot attacks all the time. I mean, that’s destruction that probably three hundred thousand mana circuits can put out, right?”

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“True. Right, what’s your energy rank? I’m D-,” said Claud. Assuming that this corresponded to his three mana circuits...

“I’m E+,” Lily replied. “Hmm. I can see a pattern here, I guess. One-folders should be E-, then. And tetra-folders would be D+, I suppose? Or is there an intermediary, like a D without any symbol behind? If there’s an intermediary, then…"

“If it's the former, Lucian Lostfon's C- makes him a penta-folder. If it's the latter...he's a hexa-folder,” Claud completed. “Wow. That said, doesn’t Celestia feel really scary then? What’s A+ supposed to be?”

“Let’s not ask that question,” Lily replied with a shiver. "The Emperor sounds pathetically weak, when compared to the pattern we can infer from this."

Laughing nervously, the two wondered about their odd statuses once more, and then gave up after a while. Without any more references, their guesses could only go so far before they became rehashes of repeated stuff, and it was with some trepidation that they continued on towards the ruined city.

More of those metallic coffins dotted the road. Some were flipped over, while others had been stripped down into their basic frameworks. Fresher blood, however dotted the areas around those coffins, and Claud grimaced. “Be careful.”

“Careful?”

Claud pointed at the bloodstains that stained the nearby coffins. “These are fresher than the ones left by the original inhabitants. It’s possible that disturbing these tombs will kill us.”

“No records exist, though,” Lily replied. “So…it’s fatal, I suppose?”

“Yeap.” Claud narrowed his eyes. “So many death traps lying out in the open. We’ll need to be more vigilant. Have you activated your defences yet? Are the artefacts from the package accessible?”

“Already done!” Lily puffed out her chest, emanating a ‘Pat me!’ aura, which Claud promptly obliged. After playing with her hair a few times, Claud remembered that they were in a set of dangerous ruins, and reluctantly lowered his hands.

Lily had a sad look on her face, but they had to focus here.

“Alright, I’ll pat you for an entire day when we go back, okay?” Claud shook his head. “You really like that, huh.”

“Well, you remind me of my mother when you do that.”

Claud immediately made a resolution to pat her head more often, before forcing himself to suppress his smile. Instead, he nodded in silence, and then continued on the road.

Three minutes later, their vigilance paid off.

“To our left,” Lily muttered. “It’s that…ghostly thing.”

“The best way to deal with it is no interaction,” Claud replied quietly. “Let’s talk about something and ignore it.”

Nodding once, Lily said, “What artefacts do you want to get here?”

Claud ignored the ghostly fellow dancing at the side of his vision and said, “Preferably something that allows me to do things without sending my body there physically.”

“Oh, you’re talking about the Second Shadow, right?” Lily asked. “I also want that!”

“Right? We can send out a bunch of shadows to do things while we sit in the safety of our home!” Claud hummed lightly. “Let’s hope we can find a few of them and everything.”

The spectre made some threatening movements at the corner of his eye, but the only thing Claud did in response was to poke Lily’s cheek, which netted him a small poke back. Before long, the two of them had seemingly immersed themselves into a game of poking each other, and before long, the spooky thing vanished.

“Phew. It’s gone.”

“My cheeks feel like they’ve been reinvigorated or something,” Claud replied. “It’s tender now!”

“Well, that’s what continuous poking does,” Lily replied. “My cheek’s springy — wait, stop poking!”

Claud grinned, and then stopped on the spot. After allocating two minutes for the two of them to stabilise their mood, Claud and Lily made their way towards the city once more, which was actually further than their eyes told them.

After around an hour or so, the two of them arrived at the huge, imposing city walls. They were far taller than anything Claud had ever seen, only losing out to the incredible barrier that surrounded the Istrel Sovereignty. The dull sheen on these walls made them look weak, but Claud knew better than that. For walls to be this tall, they had to be immensely sturdy, or they would collapse under their own weight.

“We don’t need a fake identity to enter this place, right?” Lily asked with a wink.

“I’ll be scared stiff if we do, but — oh.”

Claud’s words died as an illusory crowd appeared in front of him. Floating figures, blurry and transparent, had filled a moving road with lots of seats, which was equally transparent. Above them, those coffins left and entered the city, and Claud immediately recalled the hazard involved here.

“We’ll need to join the queue and sit down. Wait for us to move through the city gates automatically, and we’ll be fine,” said Lily. “If we barge in, illusory guards will fire on us. They’ve killed penta-folders before.”

Claud nodded. “It’s a waiting game again.”

“We’re together, so it’s fine. Any place is good, as long as you’re by me.” Lily gripped his hand. “Don’t ever let go of me.”

“How mushy.”

Those words earned him a weak bop on the head, and the two of them walked over to join the queue. Even penta-folders had to obey this rule, so for the two of them, whose total mana-circuits equalled one of those dead idiots, there really wasn’t much to be said. After all, even bigshots had died here, and to make matters worse, the Celestia Ruins felt like a place where actual bigshots probably had an energy rank of B or A, which placed them as septa-folders and onwards.

Claud was very happy with his life, so he didn’t really see the need to prove himself or something. The only one he cared about was Lily, and she was too much like him to actually get him to do something dangerous.

“Did you bring a Moon Phase set along?” Lily asked. “Seems like we might be in for a long wait.”

“I brought some card games too,” Claud replied. “I really want to snack on something while we’re playing, but…”

“We’ll need to ration our food.” Lily rubbed her tummy. “Can’t help it.”

“Yeah…”

Taking seats on the moving road of chairs, the two pulled out some games and started to play.

All things considered, this was quite the honeymoon.